Obama Malware Follows Election

By DT Staff Published October 25, 2009

Obama Malware Follows Election — Image used with permission by copyright holder

Malware attackers will latch onto anything to push their evil, but the election of Democrat Barack Obama on Tuesday has been a godsend to them.

There has been a wave of Obama spam, with links to videos of his victory speech. Of course, those links lead to sites where the supposed Adobe Flash plug-in is actually is malware executable file. In other instances those reading the spam are asked to download a .exe file – which is a Trojan. The headlines used by the spammers include ‘Obama’s Win Reshapes the Race’ and ‘Obama Wouldn’t Be First Black President,’ according to Vnunet.

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However, security company Symantec has reported one novel new phishing variant. An e-mail offers readers an Obama DVD. To buy it, they’re asked to provide bank account details – which of course can then be easily harvested.

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